What Are AWS Application Patterns?

The cloud-native approach is not just about compute power and cloud services. A “set it and forget it” attitude won’t work with cloud-native; there are far too many moving pieces and there is just way too much complexity. Instead, this approach requires constant testing, optimization, and improvement. This is epitomized in the two key phrases of the DevOps methodology: continuous integration and continuous delivery.

To make this a reality, however, it takes a strategic approach to defining application patterns that will govern the way in which cloud-native applications are built and shipped, rather than a one-off effort. Since AWS is the leading cloud provider, we should discuss which application patterns are relevant to the AWS platform. There are many aspects to consider when it comes to AWS application patterns, and we will cover them here.

Operational excellence

The best starting point for application patterns is a commitment to operational excellence. Typically, the term ‘Ops’ is used to identify the IT team, but in this case, operational excellence rests on the shoulders of Dev, QA, and Ops teams. In cross-functional DevOps teams, every member should strive for operational excellence at every step – even in the smallest of tasks.

In their white paper on operational excellence, AWS encourages its users to manage operations as code. This helps avoid human error, enables automation of complex processes, and allows for quick and easy rollback when errors occur. Failure, according to AWS, is an opportunity for learning. They even advise performing ‘pre-mortems’ that try to anticipate potential points of failure before a deployment.

AWS Trusted Advisor is a useful tool that enables this type of accountability and shared responsibility within a team. It checks and reviews your new and existing AWS workloads looking for opportunities to save costs, improve performance, tighten security, or follow best practices for scaling operations.

Security

Security is a pattern that is non-negotiable. The term ‘DevOps’ has inspired another variation called DevSecOps that signifies this fact. Security operations take center stage when talking about DevOps.

The interesting thing about DevSecOps is that it actually results in more freedom, flexibility, and trust across teams when done right. This is unlike traditional approaches to security which created silos, stifled creativity, and slowed down innovation. Security is now a key piece of the puzzle, not an afterthought. AWS has many machine-learning-based security solutions such as Macie which automatically identifies and secures personally identifiable information (PII).

Along with this, configuring role-based access controls using AWS IAM is essential to have greater control over who or which applications access data and for how long. Access Control Lists govern access to data stored in AWS S3 buckets.

The news is full of instances of data breaches due to weak security policies and access controls. Capital One is a recent example of a data breach that affected 100 million of its users. While security in the cloud is more complex than before, AWS has the necessary tools and systems in place. It’s up to organizations to implement a security strategy that prevents misuse of their data.

Reliability

Today, there is a low tolerance for downtime because of the potential loss of revenue. With the stakes so high, reliability is a pattern that any application custodian would have high on their list of priorities. AWS has multiple reporting and health monitoring tools to keep you constantly on the pulse of your applications.

Architectural patterns like microservices enable better resilience by decomposing monolithic applications into more manageable chunks called services. This ‘divide and conquer’ approach leads to higher availability, which is critical for SaaS applications.

Patterns like chaos engineering seek to intentionally kill random instances and services and force the DevOps team to figure out workarounds and backups for every scenario.

Application performance

With the explosion of data, applications are always dealing with lots of data to transfer, store, and process. An application’s performance depends on three factors: the backend data storage layer, the middleware components, and the frontend.

The backend data layer is the most critical component when it comes to performance. Choosing the right storage formats, database types, storage devices, and organization patterns all contribute to the speed of data access. AWS has an amazing array of storage services, including S3, RedShift, Aurora, and Glacier. AWS gives its users every type of storage solution, all of which should be considered to improve data management.

AWS is devising new ways to query large datasets without bearing the load on your existing systems. RedShift Spectrum is one example of this. It is a great way to “minimize the need to scale Redshift with a new node, which can be expensive.” If you’d still rather not have to manage any RedShift clusters on your own AWS Athena is a great serverless alternative
That gives you all the power you need to query large datasets in S3 without having to maintain any clusters of your own.

This pay-per-use model is making its ways across the entire AWS stack with services like ECS and Fargate offering completely serverless experiences when operating containers at scale. What started out with AWS Lambda is catching on fast, and many AWS services like the ones mentioned above enable serverless experiences with a focus on application performance.

Cost optimization

When moving to the cloud, pricing is completely different. Rather than paying for perpetual licenses, you now pay a small fee for every small resource that you use. Though small on its own, you’ll soon realize that cloud costs can shoot up easily if you’re not paying close attention to your spending.

Cost optimization is necessary as you scale operations in the cloud. Cost optimization includes looking for more efficient services, whether that’s within the same vendor platform or a different platform. At a minimum it may require a lift-and-shift approach to transition from expensive old infrastructure to inexpensive new alternatives. For example, shifting workloads from VMs to containers to serverless within the same platform can show great cost savings, since containers and serverless are generally more cost-effective than VMs.

It pays to leverage the expertise of experts in this area. They should ideally be people who have spent years using AWS, understand Well Architected best practices, and have found ways to cut costs and derive more value from the same budget.

Application patterns enable extensibility

Microservice applications adopt a pluggable architecture. This enables them to be easily integrated with external applications. Typically, API-based communication patterns are most common. AWS API Gateway is a service that manages API design for AWS applications. In some cases, an SDK is the better choice – for example, when you need more control over the developer experience and integrations. It’s important to know when to choose either option.
Application patterns enable portability
Portability is the ability to move workloads across instances without interrupting their functioning. As instances change, the workloads which they support shouldn’t be affected. This is only possible if there is a clear separation layer between the workloads and the infrastructure that runs them.

Application patterns enable shift-left

The DevOps methodology is known to encourage a shift-left approach to software delivery. This means that not only Dev, but also QA and Ops contribute to the design and development stage of an application. This fosters deeper collaboration across teams and breaks down silos.

A shift-right approach holds true as well. Shift-right means that developers are responsible for the code that they write. They are equal owners with Ops teams for the resilience of the apps they build and also the bugs that they introduce into the system. This practice of putting ownership and responsibility where it belongs is very healthy for a DevOps team.

AWS facilitates pipeline management using tools like CodePipeline, CodeCommit, and CodeDeploy. They each perform similar but complementary roles and help build a CI/CD pipeline. They make it easy to get started with CI/CD within the AWS platform.

For organizations that are further down the line in their cloud journey, AWS’ pipeline management tools may seem too simplistic for something like GitOps. Instead, they’d want to look outside AWS for tools like Jenkins X or Weave Flux which are designed with GitOps automation in mind. Whether it’s the simple or advanced route, a pipeline brings great benefits over a manual development process.

Conclusion

Though tools enable the implementation of helpful application patterns, on their own, they are ineffective. Application patterns need a deliberate strategy and an approach for a start. Only after a strategy is in place, can you move to deciding which tools to use. With a strong strategy in place, any of the tools mentioned here can be swapped out for other better tools and the results will be the same. It’s important to not be distracted by the next shiny tool, but keep a keen focus on the strategy for implementing AWS application patterns.

As we’ve seen here, application patterns are diverse, but they all build upon each other. Without even one of these pillars, organizations would not be able to realize the goal of cloud-native applications. On the other hand, if they give careful thought to each of these application patterns, organizations would deliver cutting-edge applications that can only get better with the passing of time.

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Many Customers need to ensure that their cloud environments are compliant with regulations (such as HIPAA, GDPR, ISO, or PCI) before they could start migrating applications and infrastructure. CXOS Managed AWS ensures compliance with the proper regulations as part of automated CXOS AWS landing zone deployment and on-going compliance management.

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Resource cost avoidance

Eliminating the need to hire new cloud resources yields on average $625,000 annually in cost savings. Running the project in-house is the alternative to CXOS-led cloud migration and management. For our customers, this would have required hiring the equivalent of a 4 - 10 FTEs (4 for 8X5 service and support\migration coverage vs minimum of 10 for 24/7) who possess cloud expertise and then keeping them on staff to run cloud operations postmigration. Leveraging CXOS to prepare for the migration and to take over operations saves our customers hundreds of hours of expensive resource time.

Optimized Resource Efficiency Gains

CXOS Managed AWS brings operational excellence, experience, expertise, and best practices, aligned with AWS Well-architected Standards that allowed our customers to achieve higher resource efficiency gains, focusing resources on higher business impacting activities than what it would have achieved on its own.

Improved organizational security

The average cost of an SMB data breach is now $117,000 per incident, according to a study of data breach costs at small to medium sized businesses performed by Kaspersky Labs. Working with CXOS Managed AWS Services often-times provides a major overall security benefit to our customers and reduces the chance of a major security breach, which can cause damage in the form of brand reputation, stock price, and cost of remediation efforts.

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Reduced downtime

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